Sally Field fought a long campaign to be first lady in 'Lincoln'

In 1985, during her acceptance speech for her second best-actress Oscar, Sally Field told the audience, "I haven't had an orthodox career."

Now, the actress has proven that once again to be true with her acclaimed portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln." The epic historical drama, written by Tony Kushner, is expected to receive numerous nominations, including for Field, during this film awards season.

Daniel Day-Lewis stars as the 16th president in the final months of the Civil War as he pushes for passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, ending slavery.

When we see Field on screen as Mary, it's difficult to imagine anyone else playing her.

Sally Field arrives at the "Lincoln" premiere during AFI Fest 2012 on Nov. 8, 2012 in Hollywood. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

The actress seems to embody the troubled first lady, but it was almost a role Field didn't get.

"Are you ready?" Field asks as she begins to describe how she came to become Mary. It had been no secret in Hollywood that Spielberg had been thinking about a Lincoln project for more than a decade, and Field had been tracking it since the idea was first floated, lasering in on Mary, "knowing that this is the role I should be playing."

Early in the process, Field first mentioned her interest in playing the first lady to Spielberg when she attended an event with him. Later, after he bought "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Lincoln" -- the 2005 book by Doris Kearns Goodwin that became part of the basis for the film -- Spielberg approached Field about playing Mrs.

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Lincoln. At the time, Liam Neeson was attached to play the president. But Field knew it would be a long wait "until I got a sip" because there wasn't even a script.

"Many screenwriters came and went until Tony Kushner, thank God, came on board," notes Field. But by then Neeson, for reasons of his own, had dropped out of the project and Day-Lewis, Spielberg's original choice, had agreed to play Lincoln.

"When Daniel came on board, Steven said that he really didn't see me with Daniel. He didn't see it working," Field says.

For one thing, the 66-year-old actress is a decade older than Day-Lewis and more than 15 years older than Mary was during the Lincoln presidency.

"All the roles that I've really cared about I've always had to fight for," Field says. "I knew when it came right down to it, I was going to have to fight for this one, and I did."

So Field told Spielberg that she wouldn't let him walk away and that he at least owed her an audition. "He was generous and supportive, and said, `absolutely,"' she says. It would be a solo audition, however, because Day-Lewis was in Ireland at the time preparing for the part and Spielberg didn't want to disturb the actor, who is known for immersing himself in a role.

Using Kushner's script Spielberg tested Field, but when he called her the next day, he told the actress that he had put her footage with that of Day-Lewis' and still didn't see it happening. Disappointed, she thanked him, but to her surprise the Oscar-winning director called her back the next day.

"He said he couldn't get it out of his mind. He couldn't quit thinking about it, and he had spoken to Daniel," Field says. At that point the process had been such a roller-coaster ride that she recalls thinking, "Well, I could just throw myself out the window now."

But as it turned out, Day-Lewis felt that Spielberg really had to see them together to make a decision and was willing to fly to Los Angeles to do an audition with her. So Field found herself back in the same room where she did her first test, with Janusz Kaminski, who would be "Lincoln's" cinematographer, filming her and Day-Lewis in costume.

When she met the actor for the first time, "He was totally my darling Mr. Lincoln," says Field. "We did some sort of odd hour-long improv and I went home. By the time I got there, the phone was ringing and both Daniel and Steven were on the line together saying, `Will you be Mary?"'

While getting the part proved long and difficult, Field believes it was an important aspect of defining Mary's "absolute devotion and tenacity" to her husband. "That's what I needed for the role, and Steven needed to do that with me. It was his way of really starting to learn who Mary was."

Mary Todd Lincoln has long been a controversial figure in the 16th president's life. Field describes her as "a very colorful person."

"She picked Lincoln early on in her life when she was a very young and popular woman in Springfield (Ill.)," notes the actress. "He was 10 years older than her and kind of a bumpkin - respected but not really. But when she heard him speak, she said that `One day he'll be president and I'll be his wife."'

To prepare for the role, "I did every bit of research I could do," Field says. "I read five books. I went to her childhood home. I visited the best collections of Lincoln and Mary memorabilia."

Coming from a powerful Lexington, Ky., family, Mary had been raised around politics and her father had valued her views.

"She had an opinion, and she never lost that," says Field. "She was Lincoln's secretary of state before he became president."

The future first lady was also well-educated and well-read for a woman of that era. "Abraham and Mary loved poetry and memorized it and recited it together," adds the actress.

History shows that the first lady could be as sharp-tongued as her husband, and that wasn't lost on Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. He gave Mary a number of key moments in the film. In one scene there is a "polite" confrontation with Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), an abolitionist Republican representative who as head of a budget committee infamously tried to have her jailed for overspending on White House renovations. His efforts to chastise Mary are met with sweet sarcasm that Field delivers with a decided edge.

By 1865, Mary had become difficult for Lincoln to live with. Two of her four sons were dead, and she was depressive, prone to migraines and possibly bipolar. Lincoln, at times, was driven beside himself trying to deal with her. In one scene that takes place in a White House bedroom, the president threatens to have her institutionalized and appears ready to strike her after she has berated him for not grieving enough over the loss of their son Willie.

The New Yorker critic David Denby writes that while Mary is "not likable," Field gives "a great performance," a sentiment echoed by numerous reviewers and filmgoers.

Interestingly, Day-Lewis and Field did no rehearsals before filming, but from the moment they got together were constantly in character. Upon meeting her in Los Angeles, Day-Lewis called Field "Mother," the term Lincoln affectionately used for Mary. So absorbed in their roles, Field says she felt that she only met the real Day-Lewis after filming was finished.

"I think we both trusted completely in the work and in trying to find their relationship," Day-Lewis says. "There was never a moment when Sally seemed anything other to me than the person I shared my life with during that time."

In her long career, Field has taken some surprising turns.

She began in the 1960s on TV as the cute "Gidget" and the adorable title character in "The Flying Nun." But in 1976 she opened eyes with her acclaimed performance as a woman with multiple personalities in the TV movie "Sybil," for which she won her first Emmy. Also that year, in "Stay Hungry" opposite Jeff Bridges and Arnold Schwarzenegger, she proved she could be very sexy.

Field won her first Oscar for her role in the 1979 film "Norma Rae," as a factory worker who becomes a union organizer, and her second for 1984's "Places in the Heart," in which she plays a Texas woman holding a farm together during the Great Depression.

Field later appeared in hits such as "Murphy's Romance," "Steel Magnolias," "Not Without My Daughter," "Mrs. Doubtfire" and best-picture winner "Forrest Gump," in which she played Tom Hanks' title character's mother despite being only 10 years older than the actor.

The last decade has found her returning to television, with two more Emmy wins, one for a guest appearance on "ER" and another as the lead in the ABC drama "Brothers & Sisters," which ran for five years.

One thing Field observes about Mary is that the first lady felt shut out by Lincoln's cabinet.

"She felt she lost her importance to him because the country and the cabinet took him away for her," Field says. "But she did not go quietly into the night."

Neither has Field, with "Lincoln" giving her a chance to remind us why she has won two Oscars. It was her persistence over many years that helped get the role.

"So in some ways it was destined," she says. "It had to happen that way."

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